Robert Greenberg - The Ring - Part One - The Great Courses

[@WforWrath]

criminally underrated. I've been listening to Dr G for 10 years and its always the best time. and im saying this as a Wagner fan.

[@bertranddwight2944]

Dr.Greenberg definitely has the gift of not talking at you but telling an in-depth story of the composer as a person through historical facts, letters, journals and other sources not just from the composer but also from. the people who knew them.

[@bertranddwight2944]

Came across Dr. Greenberg's lecture on Mozart from Amazon's Audio Books...was fascinated from only hearing a 5 minute sample so I purchased it. Found the lecture so impressive and satisfying it made the other audio books I have seem amateurish. Since then I purchased other lectures by Dr. Greenberg; Mozart Operas, Beethoven and Mahler with many more to obtain in the near future.

[@Gadi2B]

Excellent, charismatic work in 5 lectures about the story of Wagner's three dramas, including the history and life of Wagner. Dr. Greenberg, an obvious fan of Wagner, makes it easy to understand in an energetic and funny manner.

[@JWP452]

This was great, informative, humorous, and (for him) reverential.

[@tommot7755]

Awesome! Wish more people would create stuff like that! Thank you!

[@blujay1524]

I've never seen a video with 0 dislikes on youtube before

[@moragkerr9577]

I'll give it one if you like.

[@freyashipley3117]

Greenberg's work here is absolutely dismal. Yes, okay, I get it: he's not a fan. But he's promised to discuss Wagner's music, and all he does is make ad hominem attacks on the composer (and not even witty or amusing ones, at that.) He even snipes at those of us who love the music. I'm only speaking of the first lecture of the series, because that's all I can bear to listen to. If you love Wagner and want to learn more about him, avoid this heavy-handed and uncharismatic oaf.

[@angryjalapeno]

Wagner was not a saint; rather he was a well-known scoundrel. And Professor Greenberg's sassy comments are quite appropriate. No idea where you think he sniped you.

[@Operafreak9]

@@angryjalapeno I think Greenberg is totally irresponsible. In spite of the hackneyed assertion that Wagner was a monster, he most definitely was not. His friends loved him. He was great with his children. He was playful, but he was a man filled with pain and compassion Fought for animal rights passionately.But the cheap,tabloid way to deal with him is to sensationalize his bad traits, further spurious information about him and blame him for Hitler. I ordered Greenberg's course on Wagner, but promptly packed it up and returned it. Debussey had a mistress who committed suicide because of his behavior,but it is never held against Debussy. It's become a popular sport to pile onto Wagner rather than to sort through what Thomas Mann called " the sufferings and greatness of Richard Wagner."

[@Operafreak9]

Very well said. I could not agree more. Oaf is the rigjt eord for the way he approaches this genius of first order.

[@moragkerr9577]

I agree wholeheartedly. I have watched the whole thing, only continuing to see how much more awful it could get. The penny finally dropped that Greenberg is Jewish, and absolutely conflicted between his appreciation of the utter beauty of the music and his horror at all the antisemitism he sees in not just the composer but his works. In the end I asked a fellow Wagner enthusiast who is also Jewish what the hell was going on here and he explained quite a lot to me, while refuting much of it at the same time. So that explains his attitude. It doesn't explain why he of all people was commissioned to produce these lectures, full of such negativity and dislike. It also doesn't explain the poor quality of his scholarship. He devotes almost no time to the discussion of the motivic structure of the Ring score for example, rather falling back on the old "they're just calling cards" trope. One motif he does quote, universally known as Wotan's frustration, he calls "anger" or something like that. He sneers at Siegmund's name as meaning "orifice (presumably mouth) of victory". (I'm sure everyone on the planet who is called Sigmund or Siegmund will appreciate that one!) It takes only the most cursory reading to discover that the name means "protector of victory". (Presumably Edmund is "protector of Eds"?) "How does Brünnhilde know that Sieglinde is knocked up?" he asks, answering himself with "I dunno." Well, maybe because she is a demi-goddess, the daughter of the earth mother, and has intuitive insight into such things? At a wild guess. That's just the howlers that immediately come to mind. There were a lot more. One thing that did strike me was his assertion that Wagner originally stipulated that Parsifal was only 12 years old. He then, of course, went off on one about Kundry seducing a 12-year-old and how disgusting this was. But the idea intrigued me. Parsifal as a 12-year-old in act 1 would work brilliantly - if you transposed it up an octave and cast a treble! Then, you only have to factor in a gap of six or eight years between act 1 and act 2 to have Kundry seducing the boy as he is on the cusp of manhood. I have no idea where he got this from though. If anyone knows, could they tell me?

[@lycomedes]

I learned a lot from «How to Listen to and Understand Great Music», but Greenberg's sense of humor does get tiresome, and when he talks about Richard Wagner, the snarky sarcasm is relentless; so I knew I should steer clear of this course.